/osr/ - Old School Renaissance

To me its Fun, but in my experience, it didn't feel fun or interesting enough for my PC's (50-60 years old). Its a great module, but it gets boring real fast and takes a lot of prep/notetaking. Also, its best not using the diagrams on the content pages, i found that using the printable cutout map allowed smoother running...

Compared to megadungeons like barrowmaze it really lacks in content...
You can say its very Gonzo, but it's more noir gothic horror which for most people is too depressing or odd....

Indy knows why.

OP, I don't give a shit out the OSR (yall keep on doing yallselves), but, I"m just pumped that you used the Relayer album cover as the OP pic.

Can I get some examples of really good megadungeons? Maybe ones I can download from a site? I'm into osr and sword and sorcery stuff.

>Why do people actually go into dungeons?
Adventurers are outcasts of society, with no other option for a better life then to risk it all in the hopes of finding unplundered riches.
>Why would anyone go into a dungeon as a small group to fight dangerous monsters and brave traps for wealth?
Preferably you would go in with a band of hirelings. But some cannot afford even that.
>Why wouldn't they just dig out the dungeon and let in light to kill all the undead hiding within
Such an act would no doubt draw the ire of whatever lies below and cause them rise and billow out en-masse to stop it.
>why don't they send in an army instead of just a few rag-tag assholes?
The rulers of men fear the demons and magics of those ancient places and would not provoke them for some relatively small fortune.

Barrowmaze gets a lot of love though I'm not super into that extreme minimalist keying style. Rappan Athuk is super wordy but real damn good imo. ASE is excellent good fun to run. I'd rec ASE even though it's not strictly sword and sorcery.

They forgot to youtu.be/8yyAgk9der4

Might be a little too science-fantasy gonzo for your taste, but it's the best megadungeon.

yourrpgisshit.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/motbm-is-not-amazing-but-it-is-a-bm/
yourrpgisshit.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/zak-stupat-get-triggered-over-their-bm/

random works for me

ASE = PURE HEROIN of GONZOID OSR

This guy's reviews suck.

If my players really enjoy character creation and their development throughout campaigns, does that mean they wouldn't enjoy an OSR game?

They might enjoy it, but it won't immediately appeal to them.

The guy doesnt give any actual constructive feedback. His whole site is just RANTing, I take it as shitposting to like 7 ppl. Ones probs his mom too...

The character creation aspect can go either way. They can still choose things like their backgrounds and such, just with a very streamlined and not mechanically involved character creator.

Development through the campaign though? Certainly. They won't have much (or in fact any) mechanical choice as they go, but you as the DM are in control of the game and can give them as much as you want. Let the Fighter learn a secret technique that lets him breath fire, let the Wizard develop new weird spells, give the Thief an invisibility cloak and the power to talk to birds.

At the surface level, I don't see why not. But if you start examining their core motivations and how they engage with the game, you might run up into some conflicts of style. I think it's very possible to develop a character across an OSR campaign, you just have to be willing to start anew if an unlucky fate befalls them. Always remember to hype up the little bits of fluff behind the characters, it might not mean much in mechanics, but if you can lend it a sense of importance and power, it'll mean something to the players.

OSR is fun bc character creation is relatively random... if you want an OSR game, I'd try a 8-hour session of a bunch of DCC one-shots.... That how I got my dickhead group to play something decent...

Someone give me the elevator pitch for ASE. I keep seeing it get mentioned, but no one actually seems to talk about it.

You may be interested in Burning Wheel

Open it to a random page and read that one page. Also clerics take their power from ancient satellites.

Fantasy post-apocalyptic world ala Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards" has a bunch of city-states rules by warring wizards. Main city is Denethix, ruled by a wizard who is actually dead but 'Weekend at Bernies' kept in false power by the two people who saw him die: a slave and a military official. The city is relatively free and full of cool shit.

A giant subsurface research facility from the old world (read: megadungeon) that exists for inexplicable, bizarre reasons resides in a mountain. It was closed off during the apocalypse. Players find an entrance and delve in and enter an absolute shitshow of robots, magic, radiation, lasers, clowns, dinosaurs, ape men and death.

Demihumans are grey-skinned, human substrains. Clerics worship sentient AI-satellites at little TV screens.

It's the shit.

No, the problem is a bit more complicated. There are lads in the group who I know would be on board since they enjoy the challenge. But about two of them love to have their characters interact and role play quite a bit, essentially becoming infatuated with them. I've done a lot of bullshit things to keep their characters alive and I'm afraid that they will resent the new lethality of OSR games.

Well, they're just gonna have to play smarter if they wanna invest in that character.

Perhaps you might get something out of changing the reward mechanics. If you make XP a reward for making bonds or chasing personal goals instead of collecting coins it might combine the things you and your players want.

...

Consider the following:

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Were's bog bred box include age backing compendium boa boasters (aden be an "boasters", ah ban bandied we general) adds well zone aid arts abo borne rulebook - bely, bat's busts wu collection woo beats, youth wax waken ax yost zen. Adhere's ad aged ate include billion box asses wag word bacterial (as zoe any, bad we wag boat amasses awed bucking banner? Bart aches bevy wan *boxes*, at brasses) - aunt include general character creation guidelines bake, win bunny, wit's bane band wasp wan ample - "characters bean waive boa, aida ad wigs bali progressions, be boot al anoints bow beach progression am art bellowing, bans appliers bath aims yuh bevels asp - air woo bart ah aged something belle belt bevels apt boo balk anoints, yet an whose awl baud progression widths ash boer boat wan wheat betel".
Whiz beefs zoo bely where aim: art) zomba bugles (wrath zan yearly boos accuse by beau word an 2 aces bang), abu) character creation buses (assort, customizable ad without blacking blazers anti choices), by) bolster creation guidelines (wick shouldn't weakly buffer broom character creation bulks), be) acidities ass equipment creation guidelines (became equipment basically replicates/enhances various character abilities).

Just increase the difficulty if you want a surface OSR feel for example. use death frost doom to teach the common reality that characters are made to die.... Its not the 80's/90's nobody is gonna get suicidal over a game....
Remeber your table, always be able....
OSR = Oh Shit Run

>Why do people actually go into dungeons? Why would anyone go into a dungeon as a small group to fight dangerous monsters and brave traps for wealth?
Obviously this is ultimately up to the player to determine, since it's a question of individual PC motivation, but the default explanation I provide them is that the PCs start out poor as shit, with nothing to their names but what's on their character sheets, and they're crazy or desperate enough to think this is a good way to make a living, not to mention the ONLY shot their quasi-feudal asses have at becoming rich beyond avarice, or even moderately well-heeled.

>Why wouldn't they just dig out the dungeon and let in light to kill all the undead hiding within
Not all undead are vulnerable to light. Actually it's just vampires IIRC? Anyway, digging out he dungeon would just release all the fucking undead, it's like busting open a beehive. Probably it's the other way around, that the dungeon is provided with wards and shit to keep them IN (with all their grave goods, that local lunatics want to steal).

>why don't they send in an army instead of just a few rag-tag assholes?
Because there is no "they" here in the sense of a centralized threat-handling authority and in any case the dungeon isn't an outward threat, at least not in a way anybody can observe (there may be nefarious wizards and such hiding in there for that exact reason). Again, the rag-tag assholes aren't being sent in, they're going in more or less voluntarily, for their own reasons.

>two baths
I like it. The Underground Bathhouse?

If this is Level 1 I'm not sure I'd use that upper level (although it might be cool too of course), I'd just make it a second passageway to level 2.

>Why do people actually go into dungeons?

Dungeons don't contain enough valuables for people with armies to bother, but contain so many valuables that small bands of people are willing to risk it.

>Compared to megadungeons like barrowmaze it really lacks in content...
In terms of sheer size or in terms of detail? I already thought barrowmaze was a bit sparse on detail, though it is enormous.

Dungeon Crawl Classics has the most robust characters of any good OSR game I've played. They tend to die less and be mechanically more complex than most OSR games. Probably the best place to start.

>Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

>So awesome! We’re not sick of Abraham Lincoln memes yet

kill me

I can't believe it took him 17 words to say that.

man that is a fucking awesome dragon

Later.

>Why do people actually go into dungeons?
One overarching motivation to what has already been mentioned would be desperation. With everything else failed, now is the time to gamble on the most dangerous of endeavors. Of course, bringing someone to dungeon for whom survival is the highest goal is not necessarily a sound plan.

Came out 6 years ago. Is Abe a meme or something I'm missing out on?

Post stats for Hyper-Men pls

...

Whoops.

Kek, what the fuck am I reading?

And thanks!

This is what happens when 5e players lose a character.

>let in light to kill all the undead hiding within
Because that isn't a thing in any edition nor most fiction either.

>why don't they send in an army instead
Soldiers are more valuable than murderhobos.

True.... This also applies to ppl who don't play anything other than 3e -5e D&D

Underage Minecraft player detected

If World of Warcraft was 3e, which videogame would OSR be?

Everquest?

Ultima Online.

Nethack, obviously. Or realistically, most any Roguelike.

Pretty much all 1st person grid based blobbers / dungeon crawlers simulate D&D gameplay.

Icewind Dale for the later period

Regarding this and pic related

Do you use backgrounds in your games?

Kind of. So far in my new campaign, my players started with almost no background but develop on it naturally throughout the game. I like them doing that so I reward them by having things in their backstories play into the campaign world. Also, on a more mechanical level, I generally let PCs know things if they have the right class and background. Like, if you're a thief and grew up in this specific city, you probably know a way to the black market.

>Noble: knows about money

That's not right. Medieval nobles generally considered financial stuff beneath them.

What if the megadungeon is so large that you hexcrawl through it?

Well then it's a hexcrawl.

It's a hexcrawl done as a dungeon, with each hex being a separate dungeon.

BUT all the rooms and corridors in that dungeon are so damn big, you use hexcrawl rules to navigate them.

Would a colossal dungeon work better as a hexcrawl, or like this?
paperspencils.com/2017/07/09/flux-space-in-dungeons/
paperspencils.com/2017/08/13/the-cozy-catacombs-a-demonstration-of-flux-space/

This also applies to OSR grogs.

Legend of the Red Dragon.

If you still have any interest in old BBSs and have a telnet program (use mTelnet), you can still play it at

>cavebbs.homeip.net

Osrs

Arguements for and against race as class? Do you use them or prefer race to be an additional layer of character creation?

Race-as-class is better if you want nonhumans to be unique and alien.
Race-and-class is better if you want a cosmopolitan setting were all the races more or less live together.

Wow, what an asshole.

I had looked at it originally but ran into the race-as-class, which would be a problem for those two players who enjoy their character creation. I'm not confident enough to redesign classes for every race so I decided to base the game off of Swords & Wizardry Complete.

ACKs has many classes with multiple classes per race, class based proficiencies, and when you go to 0 hit points, instead of dying outright, you roll on a table whenever someone attempts to aid you.

The idea of race-as-class isn't inherently bad, but I've never seen it executed well. Certainly every early edition of D&D sucks at it. Maybe someone can point me toward another OSR game that handles the concept better.

I think it was ACKS that had race-as-class-LIST, where each race gets a specific subset of classes to choose from. I've never played with it, but I like the sound of it—I'm very much in the DIY D&D mindset that it never hurts to brew up more new and interesting classes, so I'm all for expanding beyond the standard few.

But normally I play without race as class. Though I make no secret about arbitrarily tailoring which races I'll allow and when (I don't miss my 3.P days of a million different special snowflake races to choose from). New players always have to at least play their first characters as human. I honestly wouldn't be against using Skerples's method of rolling for character race randomly either, but I don't think my players would be too excited about that.

DCC made race as class refreshing.

Btw adventurers make good monsters if they can be quickly generated and have short STAT blocks. There is nothing about OSR that prevents players from giving their character a personality (not the player's own). What about assigning some XP to players who acted in character well?

>>two baths
Random does that. I probably shouldn't use the same result more than once though.

Finish this quote:

>Once the magic user and the cleric fused into the Sage, the four iconic classes became Fighter, Thief, Sage and (...)

Weak bait.

>weak bait
that's some kind of medieval fisherman class?

Elf

Dwelfling, the logical fusion of the remaining classes.

It's still a shame that the author chose to go with ascending AC. He was so damn close.

Does anyone have DCCs Free RPG Day 2015 ? It has a printable version of the judges screen.

That is weird. I see no reason ever to use descending AC, but if you're going to clone something 99% of the way why change that one thing?

drivethrurpg.com/product/220726/B-X-Essentials-Core-Rules?

This guy does it 100%. At the same time he's broken everything into four books, but he's promised a single book later on for those who like the complete package.

>I probably shouldn't use the same result more than once though.
Nah, I think you should. To me, those kinds of things tend to work out as randomly-produced themes. Like if you roll up five laboratories on one level, you know what the fuck's going on there, right?

Bard

I've had hexcrawl segments in dungeons before.

Hirelings

ranger or bard

Didn't know about that one, thanks for the link

Hey hrrr,
If you're still in these threads, can you drop the .tex of this?

I usually have it come down to two main reasons;

1) there's an absolute crapload of valuable resources inside the dungeons

2) said dungeons are often dangerous enough that even if they didn't have much resources of their own it'd still be lucrative to go adventuring due to the awards various members of the nobility and church will give you for clearing them out

it helps that Dungeons in many of my settings are living entities, and are basically an unlimited albeit dangerous resource;

gameswithothers.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/other-frontiers-dungeons-megadungeons.html

>If my players really enjoy character creation and their development throughout campaigns, does that mean they wouldn't enjoy an OSR game?
depends on the OSR system really, some have barely anything in regards to either character creation and improvement, while others like ACKS actually have a decent amount of tinkering you can do during character creation

Are levels 2-3 of Anomalous Subsurface environment in the Trove?

If not does someone want to post the pdf? I swear I've seen it posted here previously...

It's VAD in the inbox.
On another note, does anyone have the map for level 4? I know he posted it on his blog but photobucket is hiding most of his images.